Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity [LWN.net]

Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

Posted May 15, 2010 16:12 UTC (Sat) by hadess (subscriber, #24252)
Parent article: Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

2 things.

Canonical didn't propose Window Indicators for GNOME. They proposed libappindicator, which was about notification icons only at the time.

And the reason why they're not going with MeeGo is that they suck as an upstream, if you want to package their UI bits. MeeGo is a distribution, they barely did releases in the past (as Moblin), the Moblin git repositories were (mostly) taken down (where's libsocialweb gone for example?), and the MeeGo repositories still aren't up. Finally they seem to hide their roadmaps and schedules from the community.

I thought that I could help get Moblin (at the time) on Fedora, updated a number of applications and libraries for newer versions of their dependencies, helped port NetworkManager-netbook, and nothing really came out of it.

All I can say is that Canonical is about as bad as MeeGo at working upstream.

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Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

Posted May 17, 2010 14:50 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Fedora has Moblin as well and even a Fedora Moblin Spin as part of Fedora 13 release. That doesn't change whether Meego serves as a good upstream.

Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

Posted May 17, 2010 15:53 UTC (Mon) by arjan (subscriber, #36785) [Link]

I cringe at this imprecise language.

Moblin is a Linux distribution, that happens to have a different look and feel (eg Desktop environment). Some other Linux distributions have also decided to ship this environment, and call this "Moblin", without fulfilling the compliance requirements that Moblin has (in order to call something "Moblin" within the trademark rules etc), while others do a "real Moblin" including being meeting the compliance requirements. These compliance requirements are to ensure that apps written for "Moblin" run on all things that call themselves "Moblin". (think of this as a "super LSB")

Now in the MeeGo context, it turns out that the Moblin compliance was not nearly strong enough for application writers, so MeeGo has an even stricter compliance requirement rule set.

As for Canonical currently not doing MeeGo (Canonical has publically stated that they'll do a MeeGo version if an OEM requests it and pays for it); it's never easy to merge two operating systems, and unless you go all the way and spend the effort, you run the risk of having the worst of both worlds, not the best of both worlds. I can understand Canonical not doing this lightly... it's a really hard task.

Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

Posted May 17, 2010 17:57 UTC (Mon) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

"As for Canonical currently not doing MeeGo (Canonical has publically stated that they'll do a MeeGo version if an OEM requests it and pays for it);"

And on that point...it will interesting to see what Dell does with regard to MeeGo moving forward. They were selling netbooks with Canonical's Moblin Remix pre-installed for a short period of time prior to the formation of MeeGo. Dell is arguably the strongest intel-based OEM partner that Canonical has. If they don't pursue a Canonical built MeeGo solution it's difficult to see who will. The recently leaked slides concerning Dell's device roadmap seems pretty heavily Android centric if they are to be believed.

-jef

Trademarks and such

Posted May 17, 2010 18:05 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Thanks arjan. I guess we will need to bring this up with the SIG to make sure that they are complying with the trademarks.

Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

Posted May 17, 2010 19:31 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Intel used to called the GUI Moblin and now it is become this all encompassing term with multiple meanings. Are you claiming that Fedora's use of Moblin tradmark violates some guidelines? If so, be specific about it.

Fedora's discussions related to the trademark are at

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/advisory-board/2...

My understanding is that Red Hat Legal talked to Intel and Intel wanted the trademark acknowledged and we are following due processes here as per guidelines. If you have concerns, write to board AT fedoraproject.org or legal AT fedoraproject.org

Canonical Goes It Alone with Unity

Posted May 20, 2010 10:10 UTC (Thu) by hadess (subscriber, #24252) [Link]

My point. Moblin used to be a "desktop environment", with some bits that could be replaced. So you could have made a Fedora-Moblin distribution and called it Moblin (there were even mentions of NetworkManager vs. ConnMan in the rules). Now it's a distribution, and it's impossible to call a Fedora version of it Moblin, or MeeGo.

I used to be able to test Moblin stuff by starting a new session, now I would have to dual-boot. It makes developing for MeeGo a pain.